GE & VC Firms Announce $200M Open Innovation Challenge to Accelerate Power Grid Technology Through Open Collaboration
14 July 2010
GE announced a $200-million open innovation challenge that seeks breakthrough ideas to create a smarter, cleaner, more efficient electric grid, and accelerate the adoption of more efficient grid technologies. GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt unveiled the challenge, the “GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid,” in San Francisco 13 July.
The global challenge invites technologists, entrepreneurs and start-ups to share their best ideas and come together to build the next-generation power grid to meet the needs of the 21st century. The challenge is one of the largest ever and is open immediately at www.ecomagination.com/challenge.
The Challenge, launched in collaboration with leading venture capital firms Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer and RockPort Capital, and Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired magazine, is part of GE’s ecomagination initiative, a global commitment to build innovative clean energy technologies and will help fund the most promising ideas. Proposals are sought in three, broad categories: Renewables, Grid and Eco Homes/Eco Buildings. Select Challenge entrants will be offered the opportunity to develop a commercial relationship with GE through:
- Investment: the $200 million capital pledge of GE and its partners will be invested globally into promising start-ups and ideas
- Validation: evaluate entrant’s business strategy through in-depth discussions with GE's technical and commercial teams
- Distribution: explore partnership opportunities with GE to scale a business and create global reach
- Development: leverage GE’s technical infrastructure and GE Global Research Centers to accelerate technology and product development
- Growth: explore opportunities for utilizing existing GE customer to take Challenge products to market
The $200-million commitment will help bring these new ideas to market by providing businesses and individuals with the opportunity to secure growth capital through GE investment and/or investment by participating venture capital firms. It is open to anyone aged 18 years or older and all legally formed entities.
Over the course of 10 weeks, entrants will be able to submit their ideas via ecomagination.com. Entries will be evaluated as candidates for both a potential future commercial relationship as well as a $100,000 innovation challenge award acknowledging their entry as an example of outstanding entrepreneurship and innovation.
The candidates for a future commercial relationship with GE will be evaluated by a committee of representatives of GE businesses and the challenge partner firms. A separate, independent judging panel including challenge advisor Chris Anderson, GE executives and leading academics and technologists will also provide input on the commercial relationship candidates, as well as select the five recipients of the $100,000 innovation challenge award. Members of the general public will also be able to review and comment on entries and show support for the idea that they believe will have the most impact on the smart grid of the future.
I guess this is as good as place as any to post this; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science+environment-10646282
Posted by: ai_vin | 15 July 2010 at 03:22 PM
Nice to read about resilient growth of alternative energy. Though the source has suffered badly as a dependable source.
What GE should be looking for here is a "Micro-grid" concept in energy distribution. This would include local, community and municipal-based distributed energy generation via a handful of technical methods. Mr. Immelt would do well to immediately assign an R&D team to the goal of developing a viable, low cost, NG fueled SOFC for combined heat and power at the residential level.
These residential power units will become the 21st Century water heater. They will in fact heat water, provide home heat and some level of electrical power. There is already plenty of work going on in this field with Bloom Box pioneering field tests at places like Google Inc.
We will be making this suggestion more formerly in participation with the GE program.
Posted by: Reel$$ | 16 July 2010 at 09:21 AM
Even high temperature PEMs could provide heating, cooling and electricity for buildings and homes. I would like to see GE get into home and building CHP systems, it would use energy more efficiently across the country.
Posted by: SJC | 16 July 2010 at 10:22 AM
Home and building CHP systems are all well&good for the cause of "energy independence" but if they're fueled by NG the independence is only temporary. America may have a lot of NG (and close neighbors with even more to sell them - wink) but it is still a finite resource.
Don't you think we owe it to ourselves to go one step beyond "energy independence" to "sustainable development" ???
Posted by: ai_vin | 16 July 2010 at 01:18 PM
Sure, you need to make sure the buildings and homes energy efficient first, but one step at a time. All new homes and buildings are not going to be built sustainable over night. If we can get distributed energy in homes and buildings with a retrofit, then the grid is more stable and the most of the rest of the energy goes into heating water, heating interiors and with absorption cooling even air conditioning. Not bad using 90% of the energy locally instead of 30% centrally.
Posted by: SJC | 16 July 2010 at 06:06 PM
Excellent points SJC. Energy independence is a steps program. Of course we want to move to a fully sustainable fuel as quickly as possible. However there is little use in doing this without a functioning infrastructure of CHP type residential power units.
A quick look at various technologies for LENR or breaking water bonds provides a few ideas about how to fuel CHP once installed on a mass scale. And for the full green approach, gasifying municipal and other waste streams would create a nice source of methane and CO fuel.
Posted by: Reel$$ | 17 July 2010 at 04:03 AM
Five years ago, GM said that they were going to get into the CHP business with fuel cells to prove them out before wide spread deployment in cars. That was when GM was making many press announcements that never came true.
GE could really make some headway here. The positive press of them selling CHP units in buildings would be huge. Buildings consume a LOT of energy, so when you can use it more efficiently, people pay attention. When we use less natural gas for buildings we can then use it for FFV/M85.
Posted by: SJC | 23 July 2010 at 08:58 AM